This weekend is Memorial Day weekend, and you know what that means: the beginning of road-trip season! Seems like a good time to check out Sago Mini’s Road Trip app (Sago Sago, December 2014) — especially since it’s currently free. You play as Jinja the cat, off to visit one of three friends (a dog, […]

Work your way up the Center for Disease Control’s ranks from trainee to master “disease detective” by uncovering the causes of disease outbreaks in Solve the Outbreak (CDC, 2013). Every chapter presents background on a fictionalized outbreak and five clues, each followed by a multiple choice question to narrow down the outbreak’s source. The clues […]

With Earth Day‘s 45th anniversary celebration yesterday, it seems a good time to review the World Wildlife Fund’s lovely awareness-raising app WWF Together (2013). The app introduces sixteen endangered species from around the world, each characterized with a quality emphasizing its uniqueness: e.g., panda (“charisma”), elephant (“intelligence”), marine turtle (“longevity”), tiger (“solitude”). Each animal receives […]

In Fiete: A Day on the Farm (German developer Ahoiii, December 2014), children help sailor Fiete — star of his own previous, self-titled app — and his farmer friends, Hein and Hinnerk, throughout their busy day. The home screen shows the three in a boat. The sky is blue, the hills are rolling, the birds […]

Author/illustrator Torben Kuhlmann has collaborated with American publisher NorthSouth Books, their Swiss parent company NordSud Verlag, and German publishing company Friedrich Oetinger to create an enhanced e-book edition of Kulmann’s 2014 picture book Lindbergh: The Tale of a Flying Mouse (April 2015). In Kulmann’s story (translated from the German by Suzanne Levesque), a mouse realizes […]

Earlier this year publisher Kids Can Press and developer Animanga Plus released a “motion comic” e-book version of 2012 print graphic novel Cat’s Cradle Book 1: The Golden Twine (January 2015), written and illustrated by Jo Rioux. This fantasy series-opener begins with an intriguing prologue: a young boy sent to lock up his family’s chicken […]

The latest in Nosy Crow’s series of fairy-tale adaptation apps (which includes The Three Little Pigs, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack and the Beanstalk) is Snow White, released last week. Snow White employs the same winning formula of the other series entries: cheerful illustrations and animation; witty humor; well-integrated interactivity; straightforward navigation; charming […]

Many of David Wiesner’s best-known books are wordless or nearly wordless. Mr. Wuffles, Flotsam, Tuesday: readers create their own narrative based on a visual experience. And that experience is unlike any other — each of Wiesner’s books is entirely unique, though each is also indelibly his. His new app, Spot (HMH/Smashing Ideas, February 2015), is […]

“One foggy morning, Fiona sat on her front stoop, wondering what to do with the day. ‘I’m bored. I wish something exciting would happen…’” With that, the fog snatches up Fiona’s scarf and leads her on a chase around a city’s environs (it’s unnamed but the skyline is San Francisco’s; makes sense given the fog). […]